Peculiarities of the Functioning of the Taboo Lexicon in the Modern Western Cinematography

Introduction. The article reviews peculiarities of functioning of taboo lexis, which is a manysided and indispensable aspect of modern filmmaking. The study aims at the analysis of taboo functioning in the linguistic field in order to improve foreign content application in compliance with censorship requirements. The implementation presupposes analysis of taboo lexical units, revealing their functioning features as regards to acceptable implementation of the taboo and to depict the possible ways of optimization of its use in modern cinema.

Methodology and sources. The article presents results of the analysis of the taboo lexis in Western filmmaking, the former being based on a complex semantic-discursive and pragmatic approach. Specific linguistic methods of observation, description and quantitative measurement are used in the article together with the general linguistic methods of comparison. Informative basis of the study is comprised of more than 300 examples selected by the method of continuous sampling from 19 Western films and y means of the internet-resource scripts.com, as well as slang and jargon dictionaries.

Results and discussion. Taking into account many-sided study of the taboo lexis, the article reveals more than 60 units representing gender, and social features of taboo in the English language carrying an imprint of directive connotation. These taboo units are ubiquitously used in the Western filmmaking degrading the speech value of film characters and the general cultural level of film industry. The analysis demonstrates that taboo lexis is able to create veritable images of film characters and their scenic behaviour in spite of the unacceptability of taboo usage in mass media.

Conclusion. As was shown by the study of the taboo lexis its application by English-language speakers in film is conditioned by considerations of magnified emotional and evaluating expressivity of the speech. It is particularly noticeable that marginalized strata and theme scope of communication on topics of crime of illegal income with the help of taboo is defined by directivity of the discourse and language play.

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